Volume I Part 24 (2/2)
These various hypotheses are contradictory enough froical point of view; they exclude and destroy one another But when it is a question of notions which are essentially incapable of being strictly defined, the hueneralities Contradictions do not embarrass it; its adaptability is practically infinite
The beliefs which we have just described tended for ht in that _Ritual of the Dead_ which, although certain of its parts date from the most ancient times, did not take its co more spiritual and less material, they were less opposed to the subdivision of the sepulchre than the more primitive idea; and this subdivision was necessary if the public and commemorative part of the to the exploits of a Thothmes, a Seti, or a Rae had already been hteenth dynasty, but it was not until the nineteenth that it becaress of ideas and of art had then advanced so far, that more ambitious desires could be satisfied, and the country filled with nificent edifices, which, like the teinal in so far as they belonged at one and the saious and funerary architecture We should call theyptians, like all the other races of antiquity, believed in the real presence of their dead in the buildings erected in their honour
[Illustration: FIG 178--Entrance to a royal toypte_, ii, pl 79)]
The other division of the tomb is that which contains the well and the -place of the illustrious dead The second half of the royal sepulchre had to be as sumptuous and luxurious in its way as the first, but the problem placed before the architect was diametrically opposed to that which he had to solve in the other part of his task In constructing and decorating the funerary te before the eyes of the public, for their benefit and for that of the re out the toether he pursued his enterprise in the mystery and shadow of a subterranean workshop, to which all access was no doubt forbidden to the curious He and his assistants cut and carved the living rock by the light of torches, and his best ingenuity was taxed to devise enerations those works of the best artists of Egypt hich the walls were to be covered
Those prodigies of patience and skill were executed for the benefit of the deceased alone Ireat reatest extent possible, it was of still greater -place should not be troubled by the visits of the living; and the reater were the deserts of the faithful servant upon who of undisturbed peace in his eternal dwelling should be secured, the royal tomb seems to have been constructed without any such external shoould call attention to its situation The tombs of private individuals usually had a walled courtyard in front of them to which access was obtained by a kind of porch, or toith inclined sides and crowned by a small pyramid
But the explorers, Belzoni, Bruce and others, who disengaged the entrances to the royal tombs, found them without propylaea of any kind[246] The doorway, cut vertically in the rock, is of the utmost simplicity, and we have every reason to suppose that, after the introduction of the mummy, it was carefully masked with sand and rocky _debris_[247]
[246] Infor such external constructions The fine tomb of Seti I, for instance, opens upon a ravine which is filled with the waters of a mountain torrent at certain seasons
[247] When Belzoni's workmen found the entrance to the tomb of Seti, they declared that they could not advance any farther, because the passage was blocked with big stones to such an extent as to be impracticable (_Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyraypt and Nubia_, 1820, 4to) Mariette also believed that as soon as the mummy was in place, the external door was closed and earth heaped against it in such a way as effectually to conceal it It is thus that the clashi+ng between the tomb of Rameses III and another is accounted for The workmen did not see the entrance of the latter, and were, in fact, unaware of its existence until they encountered it in the bowels of the rock (_Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, t ii p 81)
The existence of the temples in the plain made it unnecessary that the tombs themselves should be entered after that final operation had been perfornificant in this direction ”The priests say that their registers attest the existence of forty-seven royal tous, only seventeen remained”[248] This assertion cannot be accepted literally, because twenty-one tombs have already been discovered in the Bab-el-Molouk, some of them in a state of semi-completion, besides four in the ravine which is called the _Valley of the West_, which makes twenty-five in all What the priests meant when they spoke to Diodorus was no doubt, that at the time of the Ptolemies, no more than seventeen of their entrances had been discovered If through the plans made for their construction and preserved in the national archives there were some who knew their situation, they preserved the secret We know, by the inscriptions upon their walls, that fifteen of the tombs which are now accessible, were open in the time of the Ptolemies; several of them seem to have been shown, to the Roypt, as national objects of interest[249]
[248] DIODORUS, i 46
[249] ”Above the Memnonium,” says STRABO (xvii 46), ”there are royal to rock to the number of forty; their workmanshi+p is excellent and orthy of attention”
The precautions taken to hide and obstruct the openings of the royal tombs were thus successful in many cases Soh the ardour and patience which characterize ood reason to suppose that there are others which yet remain to be found In 1872 Professor Ebers discovered a beautiful private toh situated close to one of the most frequented paths in the necropolis, had been previously unknown It was open, but the opening had been carefully concealed with rough pieces of rock and general rubbish by the fellahs, who used the to officers of the viceroy They would remain concealed in it for weeks at a tie The royal cemetery of the Ramessides has possibly much more to tell us before its secrets are exhausted
The entrance to the to discovered and freed from its obstacles It was difficult, of course, to prevent the survival of some tradition as to the whereabouts of the burial-places of those great sovereigns whose yptian pride in the days of national abasement and decay Provision had to be ainst a forced entry into the gallery either by an enemy or by some robber in search of treasure, and we find that the precautions adopted were si the royal tombs at Memphis Let us take as an example the finest and most complete of all the to two flights of steps, and traversing two long and richly decorated corridors, Belzoni arrived, without discovering either sarcophagus or anything that looked like the site of a sarcophagus, at an oblong chamber 13 feet 6 inches by 12 feet A wide and deep well, which here barred the passage, seemed to indicate that the extremity of the excavation had been reached Belzoni caused himself to be lowered into the well The walls were everywhere hard and fire, either open or concealed, by which access to a lateral chaht be obtained But Belzoni was too old an explorer to be deceived by such appearances On his first arrival at the edge of the well he had perceived in the wall on the farther side of it a sh This had been made, at some unknown period, in a wall covered with stucco and painted decorations Across the well a bea, which had served the purpose of so fro that the well ended in nothing that the screen of masonry on the other side had been pierced Belzoni had therefore only to follow the road opened for hie was thrown across the well, the opening was enlarged, and a new series of galleries and chaus-chamber itself[250]
[250] BELZONI, _Narrative of Operations, &c_, pp 233 _et seq_
Belzoni rehout the whole course of the excavation the doors of the cha been walled up, and that upon the first steps of one of the staircases a heap of stone rubbish had been collected, as if to discourage any one who ht penetrate beyond the well and pierce the barrier beyond its gaping mouth It seems likely that the first violator of the toe took place in very ancient tiyptian robber
In the sarcophagus-chamber Belzoni discovered a contrivance of the same kind as that which had failed to stop hius of oriental alabaster was in place, but empty; the lid had been raised and broken[251] Froiven out by the floor when struck the explorer perceived that there us He cut a hole and brought to light the first steps of a staircase, which led to an inclined plane by which the interior of the mountain was deeply penetrated A wall had been raised at the foot of these steps, beyond which a settlement of the superincumbent rock put an end to all advance after a distance of fifty-one yards had been traversed Is it not possible that Belzoni only discovered a false sarcophagus, placed to deceive unbidden visitors like himself, and that the mummy was deposited, and still lies, in a chamber at the end of this corridor?
The point at which the fallen rock arrested his progress is four hundred and eighty-three feet frohty below the level of the valley At such a depth, in these narrow and heated galleries, where there is no ventilation and where the s, it is not astonishi+ng that, in spite of his ad the exploration[252]
[251] This beautiful sarcophagus is now in the Soane Museue led again into the open air; that it was, in fact, another entrance to the tomb ”I have,” he says, ”reasons to think so;” but he does not give his reasons
These subterranean to than the colossal masses of the pyramids for the sustained effort which they imply; if we take the trouble to reflect upon the peculiarly difficult conditions under which they were constructed, they inations more profoundly than the artificial mountains of Cheops and Chephren We have alreadylength of their passages; and although no one of the other tombs quite equals that of Seti, many approach it in di, that of Siptah 370 feet, and others varied between 200 and 270 feet For the construction of such places an enormous number of cubic yards of rocky _debris_ had to be cut from the interior of the mountain, and carried up by narrow and steep corridors to be ”shot” in the open air Still ance and completeness of the decoration In the tole surface, whether of walls, piers, or ceilings, which is not covered with the work of the chisel and the brush, with ornaenii, of ures are far too nule chamber often contains ive salience to the delicate contours of the figures in relief, there it is laid flat upon the carefully-prepared surfaces of white stucco In these sealed-up caverns, in which the air is constantly warm and dry, the pictures have preserved their freshness of tint in thefashi+on And to obtain all this harht but an artificial one was available It was by the s flame of little terra-cotta lamps, suspended froypt drew these masterly contours, and elaborated the exquisite haryptian art never reached greater perfection than in these characteristic productions of its genius, and yet no human eye was to enjoy theiven to their beauties, upon which they were to be inclosed in a night which, it was hoped, would be eternal
[Illustration: FIG 179--Plan of the tomb of Rameses II; from Prisse]
[Illustration: FIG 180--Horizontal section of the same to been so often reproduced, we have thought it better to give the plan and section of that of Raements are pretty much the same as those of Seti's tomb, but the plan is a little more complicated
[Illustration: FIG 181--The sus-chamber in the tomb of Rameses VI (Froypte et de la Nubie_, folio
But yet all this as not labour lost These pictures, in which the details change continually frole desire, and all tended to the same end Like those which we have found in the toic virtue, a sovereign power to save and redeees and articles of food represented on the mastabas were shadows of people and shadows of material sustenance, destined for the service and the food of a shadow, the _double_ of the defunct proprietor of the to through Osiris, turned these shadows into realities
[Illustration: FIG 182--Entrance to the tomb of Rameses III (From horeau, pl 21)]